Designing Tomorrow: Creative Strategies for Social Impact

Is culture something you design, or does it emerge from the people you hire? I think you design it, through the decisions you make every day. Jonathan thinks it starts with the people and grows from there. The more we talked, the more the two came together: culture isn't your values poster, it's the consistent decisions a team makes over and over, plus the guardrails and tool...

Two camps are forming around AI in the social impact space. One says boycott it. The other says you're already behind. Meanwhile, the biggest decisions are being made without us. 

Kaz McGrath and Stephen Silveira of Play (PLAI — Purpose-Led AI) make the case for stepping into the conversation, holding space for skeptics and builders at the same table, and using AI as a ...

I have this problem, and I have it bad. At Cosmic I'm the bottleneck on more things than I should be, holding onto work because explaining it feels slower than just doing it. Jonathan doesn't get stuck there as often, so we dug into how executive directors and CEOs tell the bottlenecks that are right from the ones capping the whole org, and how to climb out of them.

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Nonprofit leaders want more people to see their work, but almost none of them want to be the one posting about it. 

Saralynn Finn and I dig into what changes once you get past that resistance: story stems, a repeatable format for turning an ordinary moment into a post worth reading, and the difference between posting out of obligation and posting because something actua...

Every social impact leader believes in their mission.

Funders assume that too. What they actually want to know is why you, specifically, over the ten other orgs working the same issue, or the bigger name with more reach and a longer track record.

Most leaders answer with passion, good programs, being impactful. Genuine things that still don't add up to a strategy....